All the Rules Rearranged
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: "Tell her. If you love her, tell her... For if you do not, I will - and take the consequences." Desperation in Christine's dressing-room spills out truths that change everything. But shattered lives can find something in common...
1. What is to be Done?

_Continuity note: I've based this on the cast recording and - so far as I could establish it - on the costuming and staging of the original London production._

**Chapter 1: What is to be Done?**

Her dressing-room at Phantasma held no clock. But the call-boys had been past, the dancers had flocked outside in their bright chattering gaggle, and soon it would be her turn.

She'd come so far to sing this song; so far, in so many ways. The past she'd thought forgotten had opened its guilt from the grave — its guilt and its allure both — and that old storm of tears had closed weeping and raging over her once again. Somehow she'd held herself together through it all with a strength learned from womanhood and ten years of marriage. Only a few more minutes now, and it would be over. One last aria to pay their debts — and repay a debt that was all her own — and she and her son would be gone from this place, leaving the tormented past to rest at last in peace.

She and her son and Raoul, and their baggage with them. Safe on familiar shores, in the life that she had so painstakingly pieced together for Gustave's sake out of the ashes of their young dreams...

One song, Christine had told herself throughout the hours of waiting. Just this one song left, this one thing she needed to do, and then they would be done with America and all it stood for. Time itself had narrowed down to these few minutes ahead of her, and the music she had rehearsed over and over again.

And then Raoul... had changed everything. For a second time.

The first time had been five years ago. They'd been chasing the chimera of money ever since; that disastrous misjudgement had seen half his family holdings staked on the back of a friend's single investment.

Some friend, Christine thought bitterly for the hundredth time, but she no longer said it. Her husband had defended young Boncarré's venture to the last against claims of fraudulence and mismanagement, even when the promised dividends failed to return, even when Boncarré himself was more and more often absent. The de Chagny name and credit had kept the whole ruinous scheme afloat just long enough for its originator to face the inevitable.

Boncarré had been found one morning washed up by the Seine, his pockets full of pebbles. And Raoul, who had given assurances he was utterly unqualified to make, had found himself suddenly held liable for the whole.

Since then nothing he touched had gone right. He'd tried to act as her agent, negotiating higher and higher fees to recoup their losses until her performing engagements dwindled and fell away, and those who agreed to his demands did so only when they had no intention of ever paying. He'd sold off land, and made a loss. He'd bought a high-blooded stallion to cover his best mares and stand at stud, and the nervous brute had broken a leg before siring a single foal. Finally he'd gone South to gamble at high odds; won back enough to make a difference and staked his winnings on the table at double or quits.

He'd lost the stake, lost his head, and plunged them deeper into debt than they'd ever been before. Raoul gambled steadily these days. Sometimes it was all that kept them afloat. Sometimes he would come home with his pockets empty, and another IOU left behind that she would have to silently, secretly beg his friends to destroy.

There were few enough men who would play with Raoul de Chagny now. And the humiliation of it ate at him daily along with the rest. The offer of this single New York concert at an astronomical fee had been one they could not afford to refuse... or to look at too closely.

She should have known, Christine told herself now. She should have guessed the moment she set eyes on that music... or the name of the venue, _Phantasma_. But she'd let herself stay blind; in the struggle of these last few years — as Raoul sought his own escape and shut her out more and more, and music itself became a resentment between them — she had almost forgotten those strange wild months in Paris so long ago.

She had lost the moneyed security of those early years, though she cared little enough about that. But she had all but lost her husband in the shadow of the ruin that he had brought upon them — and whatever betrayals lay between them, spoken and unspoken, she missed the old Raoul with a quiet, hopeless ache that she tried to keep from him when she could. They'd hurt each other enough, and been hurt in return.

He'd loathed the very idea of America; loathed the grinding necessity that drove them there, peddling her voice in search of the highest fee, and the calculated vulgarity of a country that made a god of Mammon and a cult of sheer size. Bigger — better — more money: even the nasal bray of the English they used here was alien.

None of them — save perhaps Gustave, with the endless adaptability of the young — felt at home here, but Raoul had resorted to the bottom of a glass before they'd even landed, with the predictable results on his temper. It happened more and more often these days, and she hated it; hated the changes it made in him and the constant anger unleashed in response. He heard only echoes of his own self-accusation, and whatever she tried only made matters worse.

So she'd been alone when it mattered. When that toy had started to play its mocking tune, and the Phantom of the Opera had stepped out of the shadows of memory to lay claim to her body and soul — as if ten years of silence could be wiped away, just like that.

She'd been angry, and afraid, and adamant... and alone with him. _Where were you then, Raoul?_

She'd known what she had to do, and she'd done it. She'd sent the one-time Phantom away, just as he had sent her away on that night of renunciation when he'd cut loose his claim on her and set her free. That night which should have been the end of it all... and was not. For that, they both bore the blame.

It did not give him any rights over her. He'd made his choice at her expense, and no amount of suffering made her a prize for unhappiness or a bandage for his wounds. He could not renounce her and then reclaim her as if he had learned nothing at all — and for all his cleverness, he still had not understood that when he set his webs to snare her and those she loved, he brought that heartbreak home to himself as well.

He'd tried to snare Gustave with illusions and forbidden delights, just as he'd held Christine mesmerised in her innocence and youth. He'd taken her child into a land of dark marvels, and all the masks had been stripped away... and he'd realised at last, even as she had, that one night's intoxication could have consequences.

But they were not consequences that could be allowed to touch Gustave, who knew only that he had been enticed into fairyland and found a monster hiding there. The boy loved Raoul: her Raoul as he used to be, husband and father. He had no idea of the wound he had dealt this faceless stranger; he was only a child and only afraid. And yet by his very existence he had taken a soul grown selfish in its demands, and brought it back towards redemption.

She would sing her best tonight, she'd vowed. Sing... and then leave with Gustave, and do no more harm in a life that should never have twined with hers. It had all seemed so simple, leading to that one final act: so simple. Until Raoul had woken old hopes and old hurts, and turned all her assumptions upside down. Again.

Oh God, if he only meant it: if he would only come back to them, only _try_, only break free of the endless treadmill of misery and shame and let her help as she had begged so often to do...

"We have to leave. We have to go. Now. Please, Christine — if you still love me at all, please—"

Amid all the love and all the promises, there had been desperation and a vulnerability he hadn't let her see for a long time. Her heart had gone out to him, and she had almost said yes. But how could she, after all that she'd promised, and the contract that she'd signed? And what possible reason could there be for him to throw everything away in unthinking panic when they both knew just how much they needed the money?

There was no sinister plan: no blackmailing notes, no hidden garotte and no demon. Whatever scheme the Phantom had had in mind in bringing her here, he had renounced it in Gustave's name.

Raoul didn't know that; how could he? To his mind, their old foe held nothing but taunting horror and every request must hide some devious plot. But she'd seen the Phantom with her own eyes yesterday and seen his repentance. There was nothing for Raoul to fear out there tonight; only a lonely creature condemned to the dark and craving one single shaft of light in return for his gift of her voice.

And so she'd sat helpless before Raoul's pleas, caught between the certainty of her secret knowledge and the yearning to make the gesture all the same — to reach out at any cost to catch her husband's hand before pride and humiliation could slam down again between them and that desperate grasp for help was lost forever.

"There's a sailing tonight, in an hour. I managed to get tickets. We can be out of here. Out of the country, away from all this. We can start again... but we've got to make that ship. Tomorrow will be too late..." A sudden shiver had overtaken him like an omen. "Too late for us all, Christine. We need to bury the past for good: leave the hurt behind."

~o~

How long had he been standing there at the door, looking back? How long... while her thoughts whirled in this aching void of memory and indecision?

Too long. The line of his shoulders slumped a little as if something had gone out of him, and he reached for the handle, turning away. He was leaving without an answer; but her silence was an answer in itself. And wild unreasoning fear told her that if she let him go now, like this, it would be the end for both of them.

"Raoul, wait—" She was gathering possessions frantically, heaping them together across the dressing-table until she realised the folly of it. What was there here that she needed? Everything else was back in the hotel.

Wait — the case for the earrings— She caught it up, thrust it hastily into her reticule and reached for her coat.

"Raoul..." But the distance between them had somehow vanished, and his hands were warm on hers and his eyes dawning with tenderness and disbelief; and there was no need for words after all.

Christine put both arms around her husband's neck, drawing his mouth downwards, and felt his hold tighten round her with the first hesitant movement of that kiss. For a moment it was shy and awkward between them, as if in a play with forgotten lines. Then a long sigh went out of him, and she was cradled back against his shoulder being gently and thoroughly embraced, with a sweetness that seemed to draw all the urgency out of her limbs.

"We should go..." She managed it between breaths as he bent over her, and took another kiss in return as if to give herself the lie. "Raoul, the ship..."

"There's an hour—" It was murmured against her throat, and she thrust him off, struggling against that same trance-like haze of rediscovery.

"No, we should go." She pulled herself out of his arms with an effort, and saw him return equally ruefully to reality.

"You're right, of course. Where's the—" A sharp rattle of the door handle as he felt behind him, followed by another, more forceful attempt. Raoul swung round, frowning, and caught hold of the handle with both hands, throwing his weight against the door. It shuddered but stayed shut.

"Locked." His jaw was set. "We're locked in your dressing-room, Christine — and someone wants to make very sure—"

"That's ridiculous." Christine thrust him out of the way and jerked hard on the handle herself, feeling panic begin to rise. "They're expecting me on stage..."

"Planning to leave so soon, Miss Daaé?" The voice came from all around them and nowhere, and panic curdled into fury as she understood. How dared he use those old tricks on her — now?

A moment later it was the mirror speaking, as if her pale reflection had found a life of its own. "But you must hear me out, Christine... I insist..."

Raoul's face was behind hers in the mirror, drained of colour; but behind _that_ — in the shadows—

The white mask caught the light and Raoul choked back an oath, dragging her round with him as if to interpose his own body as a barrier. The Phantom's lips were smiling, and his evening dress was as immaculate as Raoul's own.

"A touching scene, Vicomte." He extended one long arm in mock courtesy to flick a single richly-hued hair from the lapel of Raoul's jacket as the other man tensed. "I see you are still trading upon your... charms."

Raoul's ashen cheeks flushed a stark, unattractive puce. His grip on Christine had tightened unawares. "And I see you still like to _watch_... or is that the best you can do, monsieur? Will you consummate your passion with another chandelier?"

She flinched from that reminder, tugging against his hold. "Raoul, please—"

But the momentary fury in the Phantom's eyes was gone as swiftly as if she had imagined it. His smile widened, with a pointed, mocking stare at her husband's imprisoning arm until Raoul's flush deepened and he had to let her go.

"Behold your gallant suitor." A flourishing bow, swept towards Raoul. "The man of bravery and sacrifice"—the words bit like knives—"who hangs upon you like a drowning man, dragging you down in his wake. Do you think him worthy of you, Christine? Do you think even he believes that? It's time to shake free that clinging touch and spread your wings; time to soar as you should and let him sink as he deserves. Out there they are waiting — waiting for that moment of breathless hush, waiting for the glory that only you can give. I have waited for you; my music has waited for you... fulfil us, Christine, complete us, make us one — stretch out your hand to destiny and _choose_—"

Memory sang in her veins, ardent and dark, and she moved towards him in a waking dream. Fingertips brushed against the hand that reached for hers; the answering tremor swept over her like the crest of a mighty wave, and she was flying... falling... flying...

"Let her _go!_" Raoul's voice cracked and broke, shattering spellbound perfection, and Christine found herself back on earth with a gasp. "Christine, whatever you may believe, this— this _thing_ is certainly no angel—"

"No angel, monsieur, but a man." Cool, powerful hands enfolded hers, drawing her close. She could feel the stir of air as he inhaled; sense a tiny pulse at his temple behind the mask. Even in contempt, his voice was beautiful. "And I believe your _wife_ has made her choice—"

"What choice? To sing — to obey — to serve?" Anger kindled in Raoul like a flame, warm with the rough edge of human imperfection. "What has she ever had from you but demands and deceit? When would you have told her the truth of this game we are playing: tomorrow? Next year? Never?"

"Game?" Christine's voice sounded high and uncertain in her ears like that of a frightened child. She had chosen nothing, had not meant to choose... The grasp that held her fingers had slackened abruptly, and her hands sought each other at her breast, twisting almost unconsciously.

She looked across at Raoul; back up for an answer that never came. "What does it mean? What game?"

"Why so silent, monsieur?" The words were a mockery; but her husband's face held only harsh resolve. "Tell her. If you love her, tell her. Don't you think she deserves that much? Tell her the meaning of that choice, and how it was agreed. If you're the man you claim to be, tell her the truth of that song tonight — and _then_ let her decide."

An instant's pause. He made as if to reach out; stilled it, in a brief betraying movement.

"For if you do not, then I will — and take the consequences."

Cold fury towered behind her, and she shrank away. "Fool, do you think her heart will follow you then?"

"I think she will hate me for it," Raoul said very softly, each word dropping into the silence like the ashes of all hope. "But I think she has the right to know."

Her eyes found his, and flinched from the bleakness there. Oh God — what had he done? What were they hiding from her?

"Raoul..." She went to him, slowly, step by step across an aching abyss. "Raoul, I'm afraid."

His arm beneath her fingers was rigid and without response; but his other hand came up to cover hers briefly, then fell on an ragged indrawn breath. His gaze lifted to face her. Flickered upward, in a glance at that silent other.

"It was a wager, Christine..."


	2. Fathers and Sons

**Chapter 2: Fathers and Sons**

He'd taken insane bets before. Bets that she could neither understand nor forgive; bets that no amount of desperation or bravado could condone, that no man with a wife and child had any right to risk. He'd taken them, sometimes, because she'd begged him not to — just as he'd drunk himself into sottish fury in some schoolboy fling of defiance against his own conscience and all nagging wives.

But this bet... hurt.

Hurt all the more because she'd let herself _believe_ in all those promises, those kisses — it was as if he'd known just how much of a fool she was, just what she wanted to hear, and gambled on that: on the idea that he had only to whistle, and she'd come fawning back to heel like some dog left by the wayside at her master's whim.

And he'd been right. That was what hurt the most; tears, sudden, unwanted, blurred across her eyes. No wonder he'd shrunk from telling her. No doubt they'd laughed together, he and that other — and of that betrayal, she would not even think — at just how easy it was to win a woman's heart. A moment of kindness, a few words of flattery, a tender kiss or a sweep of melody, and they could toss her back and forth between them in some _jeu de paume_, and stake her future on the outcome as if she were just one more sop for a man's wounded pride.

How dared they? How _dared_ they? And... how could she ever trust in her marriage again?

Raoul had given her the whole sordid encounter as briefly as he could, without excuse or evasion, like a man facing court-martial. Now, in the silence that had fallen between them, he would not meet her eyes.

"You did _what_?" The plea was a stupid ghost of hope that somehow she had misheard; that all those promises had been more than just manipulation.

"We made a bet on whether I could keep you from singing tonight," Raoul said again, the words drained of tone or meaning. "If I won — the contract would be paid in full, all our debts wiped out. If I lost — you would be his and our marriage at an end."

His gaze met hers at last, halting before her pain. "I gambled your love for money, Christine. I was drunk, and... too afraid to admit I could lose."

"And you thought—" She hadn't meant it to come out on a sob; but her lip quivered, the tears spilling over, and before she knew what she was doing her hand had flashed out to strike him across the face. She stared at him for a moment, tears on her cheeks, breathing hard. Raoul made no move either to stay her hand or to defend himself, though the sound of the blow seemed to echo between them and the mark of it was rising livid along his jaw.

He only looked at her, braced and unflinching like a child awaiting the tutor's cane. His eyes were hopeless and hurting and human in acceptance and self-condemnation; and she understood at last that her husband was waiting for her to hit him again.

"Oh God — Raoul—"

She put all her strength into it, everything that either of them had ever deserved, and watched a trickle of blood start from his mouth where her ring had caught him on the backhand blow. Then her head went down into the refuge of his shoulder, as the storm of weeping swept over her for all that had been lost and ruined and won this night, and she hid her face against his coat, clinging like a child.

It seemed a long time later that he freed himself gently, easing her down to sit once more. But his arms had come around her hesitantly, and the bruised mouth was buried in her hair.

Christine leaned both elbows on the dressing-table and let her head sink there, groping in her reticule for a handkerchief. A litter of overturned pots and spilt powder bore witness to the blind haste with which she'd once meant to leave; it seemed a lifetime ago now, when choices had been simple and love so easy...

The mirror showed her a face in clownish ruin where her stage-paint had smeared and run. With hands that she did her best to keep steady, she began to wipe away the worst of it, concentrating on the immediate task. Voices at the door went at first almost unheeded.

"She's in no condition to sing now — even I know that much." Raoul's voice, on a wince of breath. "They'll have to wait. Can't some other—"

"Tell Dr Gangle to announce a delay." Cold, commanding tones overrode the Vicomte, and the door closed. No need for notes or threats in this place, she remembered as if from a great distance; as Mr. Y, he was master of Phantasma. He owned everything here — everything, and everyone...

"Christine." He was closer now, and for the first time she heard him uncertain. "Ah, Christine—"

"Don't!" She was on her feet in an instant, whirling round to face him. "Don't touch me. Don't you dare. What— what makes you think I'd ever sing for you again?"

Had he expected a welcome? Did he think she would fall into his arms with her anger all spent on Raoul? She could forgive remorse, but he— would he ever even understand the betrayal in what he had done?

He had stopped short, the carapace of confidence cracked open for once, and yesterday she might have felt pity for what she read there. But yesterday he had forced her deepest secret from her... and given her in return a vow he'd never meant to keep.

"It was a very different tune when last we met, my Christine." The words curled smoothly round her with all their old possessive power, promising unspoken delights — but it was an intimacy that meant nothing to her, and never had at all. It was his need and his pain that had spoken to her heart, always, and if he had not understood that then he had learned even less of humanity than she had thought.

"I thought you were changed — redeemed." It spilled out of her before she could take back the impulse. "Raoul called you demon, and I thought it was only his hatred speaking. But you took my promise and you tried to trick me. You drove my husband into mad folly, and you tried to steal from him what he had no right to give — what you knew full well you would never get from me!"

Was it true? She didn't even know: if he had come to her first, if he had pleaded as Raoul had pleaded in that foul false game of theirs, if he had held out his hand to her and drawn her to the glory of the music that they shared... would she still have refused him one more time? Or would she have stepped out of her life forever into that great unknown, and counted the world well lost behind her? It was the knowledge of how nearly that lie had succeeded that scared her now. She had trusted him... blindly.

"The dear Vicomte needed no help from me in his folly, Christine. He leapt at the chance — drunk on his own self-pity, reeking of the liquor that bolsters his courage..." A contemptuous glance at Raoul, standing silent with his collar smeared with her face-paint and a drying trickle of blood from his lip. "For once that pretty mask slips—"

"This isn't _about_ Raoul!" She had flinched, unprepared, from the half-glimpsed horror of his face yesterday and been ashamed; but did he truly believe it was merely a question of masks between them? "The whole thing was your idea, your scheme to get what you wanted. Did you think I wouldn't realise that? Did you think I wouldn't care? Didn't you feel even one moment of guilt — one moment's regret?"

For an instant she was so angry she could hardly speak. "When last we met, I gave you my word to sing... and to leave you in peace. And you— you took that promise and made it into a trap. I believed in you, in all your talk of renunciation, of salvation in Gustave, and then before the night was out—"

"In _Gustave_?" Raoul's voice cut across her sharply in disbelief, and words dried in her mouth.

No. Oh no. Not now. Not with anger and accusation tinder-dry around them, and the wounds of the past so raw.

"Please..." But one glance up at the white mask told her it was useless; she had flung too many hard words too soon to beg silence from that quarter. She cast a last imploring look: _please_...

"In Gustave," the Phantom said with a bitter clarity. "My son"—his hand caught her shoulder, compelling her close—"our son."

"That's not true!" Raoul's face flamed in hot challenge, a defence she did not deserve — but meeting his eyes, she understood with a shock of her own that he'd _known_. When he'd come to her tonight to beg her to flee with him he'd already known... and chosen not to believe.

"So you still deny it?" Tension lay tight-strung beneath the mockery, and she could sense the coiled tremor in the grip that claimed her; old hatreds and a newfound passion of belonging that mattered to him more that anyone could ever understand. "Perhaps you're still drunk, Vicomte. Or perhaps you can't perceive the talent, the potential, the strange power you've neglected and discarded in a boy who is no child of yours."

The words bit home, laden with scorn, and Christine watched Raoul's face whiten under the lash and felt her heart bleed for both men. She hadn't meant this. She hadn't ever wanted this...

"Your dark dreams have turned your head, it seems, like the ravings of some childless crone — brought foulness into light, shame to what you feign to hold sacred—" Raoul broke off to take breath, wincing unconsciously where his mouth pained him, and she twisted free and ran to him, unable to bear it. His eyes were blazing like those of the boy who'd flung himself into desperate defiance to defend her honour, and it was all for her and all for nothing.

"Please, Raoul, it's useless. Don't—"

"Useless to heed the delusions of a madman — I know." He was breathing hard, hands clenched at his sides, but his face had softened a little at her plea. "But when his fantasies touch on you — when that vile lie is repeated in your ears—"

"Raoul, it's the truth!"

She'd silenced him at last. Sick shame rose in her throat as she saw that he truly, truly had not believed, had never doubted her... until now.

"No," Raoul said softly. But it was not the same as before; protest, not conviction. "No. It's not—"

"Before we were married." It made it worse. Everything made it worse. He'd been so young, so eager, so protective — so glad. And she'd been torn with the knowledge of what they'd left behind them, of the fear and the horror that had taken all the dark magic that sang to her, until she couldn't sleep at night. She'd had to know. In the end, on that last night before her wedding, she'd had to find out.

"I went to him. I had to go, Raoul. I couldn't bear the thought of him down there in the dark, like a stag torn by a pack of hounds, hiding... bleeding... dying. And—"

"And Miss Daaé found me very much alive, monsieur." It was the cruelty of triumph — of one who had been too often the object of contempt. "We wept together. Rapturously, as I recall. And then, in the dark... she gave herself over to the power of music. Again, and then again. And then again—"

"_Enough_!" It was torn out of Raoul like the sound of something dying, and for a moment there was a terrible silence. He'd closed his eyes. Opened them again with a brief hunted look as if worse things lurked in that private dark.

"And then you married me. Believing that you carried his child. And I..." He let that trail off. "But that doesn't matter now, does it?"

"I didn't know." She hated the way her voice shook. "I couldn't be certain. I was never certain, until—"

"Until you made it so. Until you started to keep the boy away from me, shut him up because I wasn't fit company for him, began to tie him to your apron-strings and bring him up as the son of that father so that what you wanted could come true." Behind the bitterness was the old inward-turning rage; but behind his eyes, there was nothing — nothing but a queer dead blankness that was more frightening than any anger she could have dreamed. "You must have wanted it very much, Madame my wife. For you know the worst thing? It was never even real."

"Our marriage? Raoul, I swear—"

A sound that should have been a laugh. "Whatever ecstasies the two of you enjoyed in that night before your so-reluctant wedding — and you've made it very clear the frenzy was mutual — there was one thing at least that neither of you knew enough to manage. Whatever you did together, whatever profaned intimacies you let him take, he never engendered a child on you. God knows I was no libertine when I came to your bed, Christine, and you were an innocent — you knew no better — but it seems he... the great seducer, the honeyed Don Juan..."

She never even saw the other man move. Long white fingers had closed around her husband's throat, relentless as a vice, and jerked him off his feet to dangle in fading spasms within the grasp of his rival's rage. Raoul moved weakly; hung still, and she understood suddenly that she was witnessing murder.

"No, don't, please don't—" It came out as a gasp, everything set aside by sheer terror. "If it meant anything to you — anything that we ever shared — please don't do this!"

"You still plead for him, this popinjay you married who befouls our son and that one precious night of ours with every lying word?" His rage swept over her and she shuddered, flinging back urgency in her turn.

"He wants this — don't you see? He wanted you to lose control, to kill in my presence, to make a monster of yourself!" Her own lungs were heaving; how long — how long since Raoul had drawn breath?

"He wanted to die," she said at last, very low, and saw the long fingers twitch in hatred and reluctant belief. Saw her husband cast floundering aside, to lie gasping and helpless with his face among her spilled powder and the marks of that failed attempt darkening upon his neck.

"Come, my Christine." Words slid around her, certain of her and warm with promise like the brush of furs around her shoulders. "Tonight is yours... and every night. Phantasma awaits."

"No." It cost an effort; but the old enchantment was no longer so easy a fit. She had lived and seen too much. And Raoul— "No. I need to understand. I need to know— the truth."

"I am your truth. The truth that comes in the dark and the stillness. The truth that we can know for a lifetime and never admit. The truth that has waited ten years to be heard, my Christine, that neither of us can resist—"

"No!" It was almost a cry as his arms came about her, power stealing over her senses, and she thrust him off, fighting to remain herself. "I— I need to know what he meant... about Gustave."

"Lies. He meant to hurt you, as he has always hurt you, as he has destroyed everything he ever promised—"

"The joys of the flesh." Raoul's voice was a mere rasp; he coughed, thrusting himself upright. "What did he know, after all? Two novices grappling in the dark... again... and then again..."

There was no scorn in that thread of speech now; only weariness, and a bitter underthread at his own expense. "But I was there on your wedding night, Christine, and so were you, in body if not it seems in spirit"—the bitterness deepened—"and you came to me a maiden. Whatever acts of passion passed between you, or you believed to have passed... he sired no child on you. I swear to you I would have known."

"But— Gustave—"

She'd watched for so long. Seen that wild musical talent dawning in her son, the quick intelligence, the gifted touch and that childish taste for the dark...

A snarl of inhalation at her side.

"I'll kill that drunken fool—" Anger slid to something more raw as he caught sight of her face. "You... Don't tell me you believe him... you trust in _that_?"

Her own anger was still unacknowledged; forgotten now that something more important, something that mattered to him was at stake, Christine realised at last, as if watching a stumbling child. He'd tried to make it all about Raoul, tried to make it about Gustave. Tried raging, seduction, everything... save regret for staking her in a game. For not having the courage to _ask_.

Memories swirled around her, unbidden, of those two nights that she had shut away, ashamed, and tried so very hard to forget: memories of music surging in her blood that left her shaking with desire, of hot uncertain flesh against her own; moments of stiffening panic, the night after in her young husband's arms, when she had been so afraid that he would somehow know. He'd been clumsy and hurt her, and tried to comfort her afterwards. It had been different, utterly different, halting and human and shy, and she hadn't known then...

With a cold sensation, she allowed herself for the first time to think back to those forbidden hours with the knowledge from years as a wife: could remember only dream-like quivers of constantly renewing need. Oh God; no wonder— no wonder the reality of consummation had followed as so harsh a shock, no wonder that night had seemed insatiable, unending.

There had been — could have been — no child from what she had done with her lover. All that fear. hope, promise of light amidst the darkness... had all been born, as Raoul had claimed, from what at heart she had somehow wanted to believe: that the Phantom's son was entrusted to her care. But he was her son — Gustave Daaé's grandson: a bright, musical, beautiful and quite ordinary little boy.

_Raoul's_ son. It hit her with a jerk almost of betrayal. She'd tried to shield Gustave from the man who was not his father. Tried to cushion him from the oncoming blow as the two grew inevitably apart. And yet... how inevitable had that been?

"Gustave..." Raoul's voice dragged tired and hoarse as if in echo.

Then he was on his feet, the words sharpening into sudden urgency. "The boy, Christine — he was to come back here—"

After she had sung — but she hadn't sung. Christine bit her lip, quelling a sense of panic. "Gustave? Gustave!"

If he had wandered off again... got underfoot, got into the machinery, or into bad company... "Where's Gustave? He should be here—"

"Here in Coney Island. In Phantasma. In my domain, Christine... where he belongs, where people disappear — so easily disappear..."

The jolt of it drove air from her lungs. He couldn't mean it: couldn't claim her son back as his own by force. He couldn't be so desperate as to take him from her. He could not.

But the words wouldn't come. And Raoul had reached the door and turned, watching them both with that drained, bitter set to his face.

"It seems my blindness at the Opera ruined both our lives, Madame. What fools we once were... Believe what you like then of me — and of him. Be happy if you can. But Gustave at least has deserved better of us both!"

The door opened; closed behind him, and he was gone. Gone, leaving her behind. Leaving her.

She understood that slowly, as a spreading numbness. _Raoul_...

"He's gone after the boy. If he dares—"

"Dares what? Dares to take the hostage you hold over me?" She freed herself from the arm that sought to claim her waist and felt fresh tears fall at last. "I never asked for this, not any of it..."

"Christine, Christine, how can you think that? The boy is safe here backstage — I'll see him found at once and brought to us—"

Warm, insistent comfort, lapping her in reassurance. What else was there now, after all?

His tone hardened. "And see the Vicomte escorted off Coney Isle — permanently. Oh, not a hair on his head will be harmed, since old times mean so much to you—"

Mercy begrudged, and hence genuine. It was the easy gifts that were to be feared.

More tears spilled, and Christine sank down in the midst of the dressing-room that had become hateful to her, waiting as the commands were given. Her son would be brought to her: her ransom. Raoul would be safe. And... and beyond that she could not think.

One song. She had come here to sing one song, to end the turmoil and go home. But she had not sung... and yet somehow it had ended, and she could not go home.

She still wore the coat she had pulled on so hastily. She unbuttoned it slowly. _Love brings you pleasure, and love brings you pain... and yet when both are gone, love will still remain..._

Angry, frightened voices outside in the corridor were becoming all too familiar. She did not look up.

"Christine — I gave no orders, I never meant for this, you have my word." The mask was askew. He was in the room, kneeling at her feet, urgent— desperate for belief. Fear lurched into her heart and twisted there in one sick movement. "It was none of my doing — he's gone, they say there's no trace—"

"Of Raoul?" It was torn from her without thought, as if, on some level, she'd known all along.

Absolute silence. For the second time that night she saw how a man looked when she had struck him across the face. But it was too late to take back her words... and her hand had never moved.

"No," the Phantom said quietly. And beneath the flinching pain and the marks of age that had come upon him in that moment of final understanding, she read a terrible pity. "No, Christine, not Raoul. Gustave."


	3. Diary of a Madman

**Chapter 3: Diary of a Madman**

Gustave. Raoul would not let himself think of anything else. He kept the boy's face before his mind's eye with a fierce, willed concentration, as if that small fair head could blot out the rest.

Gustave's face — lost. frightened — haunted him round every corner, with every glimpse of a child through the crowd and every furtive shape that whisked away down dark alleys at his approach with what might have been a struggling burden in tow. Gustave...

The persistent small shadow trailed in memory at his heels, demanding acknowledgment — attention, affection — again and again with the same uncomprehending hope, until Raoul's teeth had been set on edge by the knowledge of it. The child had wanted the old days back. He'd made himself a living reproach to the father he'd lost, and it had been one more reminder that Raoul neither wanted or needed to tell him what he had become.

Did they think — Gustave and Christine — in their tight little world of let's-pretend-Papa's-himself-again, that he didn't _know_ what his folly had done to their lives, or see how strained his wife's smile had become as she promised all three of them that things would be different tomorrow... and tomorrow, and tomorrow? Had she thought he would neither understand nor care as the boy's burgeoning talents drew him further and further away from the harsh realities of debt and drunkenness into the safe, sequestered refuge of his mother's realm, where all passions flowed into music and no voice was ever raised?

He was losing his son. He'd known that: resented Christine and Gustave for it, and hated most of all the vileness he saw in himself where he'd once carried courage and trust.

He'd thought there could be nothing worse than to watch all that you cared for fall apart, and know that the fault was yours.

But that was before he'd seen Christine stand consenting within the arm of that creature and understood at last the depths of his own blindness. He'd blamed himself for the fractures in their marriage that had set deep unhappiness in her eyes. In the worst of his nightmares he'd never dreamed it could be the fact of that marriage itself at the foundation of her hurt.

They'd been happy. Had that all been a lie, then?— like the trembling bride beneath the veil, and the son she'd watched over with an intensity born of fear; fear and... longing?

She'd wanted that monster as the father of her child. To persuade herself of such a thing, she must have wanted it to be true, Raoul told himself. That other had been there between them all along like a ghost in her body and in her mind, singing songs in her head, seaming her with his own corruption—

No. Not Christine. It could not be Christine there in the torment of his mind's eye, eager and unresisting in the moonless dark...

He'd fought to keep her out of the shadow all those long years ago. Fought and failed, and somehow all the same in the abasement of that failure he had set her free. She had been so afraid, and he'd promised her the sunlight he had no power to bring... but surely it could not, _could not_ have been her own free will to sink back into the terrors of that clutching hold?

He would have fought for her again tonight to the last breath of the last humiliation, if she had asked it of him. He'd believed — with a painful dawning sweetness of hope — that there could be a chance for them after all, and found an answering courage in himself to face the worst in her defence. Perhaps that tentative road back to happiness had been no more than illusion, but he'd caught at it with both hands and been ready to fling himself into battle at her side.

As if she'd needed him. As if she'd ever needed him or wanted him... The old hopeless resistance rose up in him against that thought, crying out; but he'd seen them together, seen her yielding in that masked embrace, seen her stand silent without protest as the monster she'd chosen laid claim to their son...

He would have spent the last drop of his blood to set her free, once, if only he could hold up his head again in her eyes. But it seemed he'd failed her from the start, and the only freedom or happiness left to give was release from the travesty of their marriage.

The Phantom had meant to kill. The world had blurred away almost without a struggle beneath that hard pressure where the great blood-vessels beat... and it would have been simpler, after all. In that first moment of understanding — when ten years of their lives had been torn asunder along with everything he thought he knew — the shelter of such an oblivion had been an almost welcome offer.

But then he knew himself for a coward already. Raoul's hands tightened, nails biting into his palms. He'd spent years escaping from their problems into drink and blurring the edges of his shame at his family's expense. No wonder he'd yielded so easily to the chance of an end... but it was a craven choice that had lost its savour.

Let Christine have her release, then, if it was all he could give her: but not that way. Not with Gustave out here, lost and alone, a victim of old jealousies and heartbreaks and obsessions the child could neither guess at nor understand.

Gustave... needed him. It was a hard little knot of knowledge somewhere beneath his ribs, an unaccustomed ache of reproach that held a warmth of its own. If he could do nothing else — save nothing else from the wreck of all they'd dreamed — he could do this. If he couldn't find in himself for Gustave the laughter, the songs and the teasing that once they'd shared, still he could do this one last thing when it mattered: find his son and bring him back safely out of the dark.

~o~

If the so-called 'Mr. Y' had claimed to hold Gustave captive, he'd lied. That had been clear enough from the first moment of Raoul's search; the steadying contempt of it kept him now from panic. The man was no demon, no puppet-master of the supernatural pulling all the strings. He was a cheap carnival trickster — no, a rich carnival trickster: the correction was a bitter one — and he could resort to threats as empty as those of any other man.

As empty as Raoul's own bravado. _I'm not afraid of him, Miss Giry_— the memory of it still had him glancing back behind his shoulder, curse himself as he might, with the glimpse of a white-painted Pierrot through the crowd enough to bring a reflexive lurch to his throat. Any half-formed craving to lose himself again in Dutch courage died, abruptly.

Meg Giry... Where was she, anyway? And with all that she'd hinted— just how much had she known?

The boy was with her, somewhere out together in this seaside madhouse; from everything he'd heard, Raoul was sure of it. What he didn't understand was why... or whose side she was on.

No-one else had laid a hand on the son of Christine Daaé. Gustave had wandered freely backstage with the thoughtless curiosity of a little Rajah — made a thorough nuisance of himself, no doubt, though they were hardly likely to tell the Vicomte that to his face — and then Miss Giry had met him with a spate of 'Frenchy-talk', and the two of them had left the theatre together. And not one of those who'd seen it could tell Raoul anything of what she'd said, save for Gustave's name and the single word 'Maman'...

"Pardon me, sir—" He caught at a towering sleeve as the crowd around him pressed towards the row of booths ahead and a fresh wave surged against them from the pier beyond. "Have you seen—"

And just how did one address a uniformed clown on stilts, anyhow? But the creature wore the white cuffs of a gendarme directing traffic, and he stood here at the junction of the ways with an air of casual surveillance; he must have seen something, even if he had not remarked it at the time. Raoul cleared his throat, trying to force it beyond the hoarse croak that was the legacy of the Phantom's grip, and tugged again urgently at the clown's sleeve.

"Pardon me, sir, but have you seen a woman with a little boy? Fair, dressed in grey, with a face"—the English he wanted escaped him, and he cast around desperately—"unhappy... afraid? The child perhaps ten years, and small? Miss Giry: the Ooh-la-la Girl?"

The painted face peered down at him for a moment from beneath its peaked cap, not unkindly; then pointed to the right.

"Yeah, I know her. They went that way... I guess she wanted to get some sea air, maybe clear her head. She was looking kind of rough." He shrugged it off, leaning down. "You a friend of hers? Paris, France?"

It was easiest to nod. "My wife..."

But the simple words hurt, more than he had expected, and he turned aside with a muttered half-truth about making haste.

A moment later, as possibilities hit him, he broke into an actual run. Bodies jostled against him and cursed, complacent sweating faces bleached into stark shadow by the flaring lights on the booths behind, and Raoul set his teeth and thrust through on the all-too-familiar path. He'd found his way down to perdition blindly, last night— this morning. His own private Hell... but she'd been a regular there, seeking her own road to oblivion. Seeking the cold, faceless waters of the bay to close over her and wipe away the past.

Suicide Hall, they called it. The pier beyond was dark, with a single row of distant lanterns like marsh-fire glimmering out over the water; but the lamps in the bar cast their intimate dim glow, and glasses on the shelf rang together as they were reached down.

He wanted a drink again, suddenly, painfully. Saw recognition in the bar-tender's eyes, and the man half-turning for the bottle with a shrug. They knew him here, after last time. He wouldn't even have to ask...

It was complete insanity, and he knew it. Raoul bit back the self-destructive impulse with a groan, sending a swift look across every corner of the place. She wasn't in here... of course not; she'd had Gustave with her. Why— why, when she'd been so distraught?

And why, in heaven's name, had Gustave gone with Meg Giry in the first place? The boy had no _sense_: trusting, confiding... why, he'd disobeyed everything he'd been told about the reporters, and bestowed upon every five-cent rubbernecker in New York the touching revelation that he still couldn't swim.

The pit of Raoul's stomach dropped away abruptly.

Gustave... couldn't swim. And the Giry girl — she'd taken him out on the pier, of course. Out over the waves with God knew what on her mind, and that wild look in her eyes the stage hands had all spoken of—

The air bit cold after the momentary fug in the bar. But he could see her now, a wavering shape in that distant dusk with a smaller shape clinging; pulling back...

"Gustave!" But his voice gave out and the wind was against him; Raoul muttered a helpless oath and began to run again, the boards of the pier hollow under his feet. "Miss Giry..."

The woman had whirled at the sound of his approach, eyes huge and dark in the pallid light, and the boy cried out as her hold tightened. "Papa!"

"You." Meg Giry's hands gripped white on Gustave's collar. "So now you run his errands, Vicomte... You and your _wife_. Have you sold your soul yet for his sake — as I did?"

Her mouth was distorted with hatred or grief, and the words that made no sense held a wild edge. She was close, far too close, to the spray-slicked timbers at the rim of the void behind her, and Gustave was pinned there closer still.

Raoul reached out without thinking to pull her away; froze as she recoiled, her bootheel slipping in a sickening jolt that sent the boy out over the sucking waves, to scrabble back with a choked-off sob. The expression in her eyes was one the Vicomte had seen all too often before— staring back bloodshot from his own mirror, above the mockery of a meticulously knotted cravat.

She must have seen that recognition in his face. Her lip twisted in a jeering half-sob of her own. "This is no place for you. I told you that. I warned you to take her away, her and the child. I told you what would happen if you let her sing—"

Raoul caught at those words like a thread of understanding amid surrounding madness. If only he could get through to her somehow.

"Miss Giry— Miss Giry, she did not sing! I swear that to you—"

"Then why are you still here? Why isn't _he_ here? Where is he — if not with her? Don't look like that... he is, isn't he? I can see it in your face... Then why else doesn't he come?"

She was weeping now — ugly, raw and unconcealed — and her hair had begun to slip down across one shoulder, long unpinned tendrils that made her look far younger than the jaded showgirl of Phantasma's stage.

"I gave everything for him — _everything_, do you understand? All those men, all those greedy hands: permits, concessions, bribes... Do you think it was easy for us here, at first? Do you think they made him welcome — a foreigner and a penniless freak? But a pretty girl from naughty Paris... Who do you think called the favours — raised the loans? I offered up everything I had for him, and let them take it: I opened my arms to them in their laps, and my legs to them in their beds.

"Oh, don't pretend to be shocked, Vicomte... they were men like you. Men of position, men of rank, married men — where did you think girls like me come from? Did you think we were there of our own accord?"

For _him_? Raoul bit back disgust and disbelief; took a breath. "And he— he let you do that? For _him_?"

And the slow burning of outrage rising within him was not only for Christine.

"He never knew — he never noticed — he never cared..." She seemed to crumple inwards in anguish, but her head came up in fierce warning before he could approach. "Don't move... I'd do it all again, d'you hear me? I'd break myself in two for him, if only he knew I was there. But he never once saw what was in front of him all the time. I danced for him; I sang, I brought in the crowds. They paid to see me and they came back and they cheered... all except him. It pays the bills, but it's not Art in his eyes, and so it's worth nothing. I'm worth nothing. It was her, her, always her... and now he has her. You and I, we might as well not exist — you know that, don't you? — for we've both been replaced!"

It bit home like a whiplash, and Raoul winced and bent his head. "Miss Giry... give me the boy. Please. Whatever you've suffered, whatever you think of me or his mother, Gustave is innocent in all this. How can you hope—"

"Not another step!" He'd reached for Gustave's arm on instinct as the boy struggled in her grasp; stopped aghast at the sight of the gun wavering in her hand.

"This shot isn't for you — don't make me use it..."


	4. Dead Souls

**Chapter 4: Dead Souls**

Her aim shook so much that Raoul scarcely dared take his eyes off the weapon. But at that range she could hardly miss. For a moment they were a frozen tableau.

"Back." She gestured with the gun, and Raoul obeyed, backing step by reluctant step away from the terrified betrayal in the child's face.

"Papa..." It was barely a whisper, but Raoul's heart clenched, helpless.

"Miss Giry—"

"It won't be long, Vicomte. It won't be long for any of us now. Just until _he_ comes... and then it can all be over, all the hurt and all the wanting and all the shame. You feel it too, don't you? You've wanted the same thing..."

The weaving mouth of the gun beckoned, mesmerising, like an endless tunnel into blackness spiralling down, and she laughed. "For years I tried and he never noticed. But he won't let the boy go — he'll have to notice now. He has to, has to... Why isn't he here? Oh, why did you have to come? Don't you know whose child this is? Don't you know what it means? Or are you sunk so low for her that you'd do anything, anything"—her voice broke—"like me?"

"I know," Raoul said softly, watching the echo of his own despair on her face as the tears ran down. "I know what she told him. I know what he believes. It's too late now for any of us to stay blind..."

He took a deep breath past the tightness in his throat. "And I've come for my son."

Gustave; Gustave, whose eyes clung desperately to his from a smeared white face. Who understood nothing in all this save that the world had fallen out from beneath his feet, and the dream he'd been promised had turned to nightmare.

Like Raoul's own. The taint of the Opera wound through all their lives, staining innocence with madness — even little Meg Giry, with her love and her ambition, who'd fled far across the sea in the Phantom's wake. And the more they tried to fight it, the more ruined they became...

Defiance welled up in memory, Christine's face like a blazing banner: _What makes you think I'd ever sing for you again? _And the scent of her hair swimming through his senses as she clung against his breast... there'd been a chance for them, he knew it, a chance for them then, before— before—

Before what? It was a hard inner voice that cut through maudlin wanderings: the pitiless voice he'd fled for years. But there was no veil of drink or rage to blur it now in the grey dregs that remained.

Before what? it asked. Before you played into _his_ hands — before you threw away every chance you might have had together over a transgression ten years old? Before you let taunts and wounded pride tell you it was him she truly wanted, when you'd seen her stand there fresh from your arms and fling accusations into his face? You knew what power he could wield over her. You saw her hold him off — saw him threaten her through Gustave. And you did nothing, said nothing... chose instead to turn your back on her and wallow in your own self-pity and your belief in betrayal.

For ten years you never questioned her love — only whether you had deserved it. In the depths of your heart you have called yourself a coward and a failure, Raoul de Chagny. Did you think— did you really think you were disproving that after she came to you for comfort... and you left her there with him and walked out on her tonight?

For a moment, as the cold wind ebbed around the pier, he did not know which was worse: the accusation or the horrible, treacherous suggestion of hope. If she needed him, oh God, if she did need him and he'd abandoned her... The waves sucked below in an endless hungry hiss, and Meg Giry hung in torment on the brink with a terrified boy in a death-grip; and with something like a groan the Vicomte de Chagny held out his hands to his son. All that mattered — right here, right now — was the aching uncertainty in the Giry girl's face.

"Gustave—"

_Gustave, what did you think you were doing? Gustave, why didn't you come straight back? Gustave, your mother and I were worried sick about you—_ All the old frightened, angry words, tugging endlessly at the heels of a child too bold and bright to be kept much longer at his mother's apron-strings... and somehow it was far past the time for any of that between them.

"Gustave... don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid." The words came out too quickly, on a brave gasp that gave them the lie. "Papa, I— I just want to go home!"

"We're going home, I promise. Just as soon as—" He caught himself short, sick at heart. "Just as soon as we possibly can."

Leave this place behind... He no longer knew if he'd won that accursed bet or lost it; or won it and lost her both at once. The future loomed hopeless and dark, and there was no place for him that he could see in it anywhere. What kind of home would there be for any of them — now?

But Gustave was a barely-glimpsed shadow pinned behind Meg Giry's skirts as the pier-end lantern swayed, and the woman who'd once been his wife's loyal friend held him off at gun-point, braced and shivering, for one final grand gesture before an unheeding audience; there were more ruined lives than one out here in the wake of an aria that never was. The opera was over... but the last notes had yet to be played. And it seemed to Raoul that they were his to carry after all.

He knelt down, slowly, though every instinct cried out against it; spread empty arms before her, harmless and wide. Bareheaded in the dark, there was nothing he could do if she chose to make a move. The knowledge of that hung between them in a desperately tenuous thread of trust.

"Let the boy go. Please. You've made your point. You don't need to do this... Give me the child, Miss Giry. We won't leave, if that's what you ask; you don't have to be alone. We'll wait, all of us together, until _he_ comes. Just let me have Gustave safe, and I swear I'll do everything I can to help. You tried to help me, last night — do you remember? I should have listened... If I'd listened to you then, we'd be far across the sea by now, and you would have been the one on that stage tonight..."

He scarcely knew what he was saying; only that he must keep the words going somehow and keep alive that tiny bridge of connection that might draw her away from the edge. But something in it had woken a spark of response.

She had taken a step forward — unconsciously, he thought.

"On the stage? You said she didn't sing!"

"She won't sing for him — not tonight. She was in no state to sing by the time I left..." He'd meant it as some kind of reassurance, but Meg Giry's face twisted in response.

"And how did you manage that, Vicomte? Throttle her a little, maybe? Mark her up enough to show? It takes a lot to keep a girl off the stage, believe me — why, men never guess how much you can hide with the right lights and a bit of extra paint. Even if it took more than one of them to do it."

And it wasn't Christine she was speaking of now, not in those dragging bitter tones... He tried to keep sick understanding from his face; failed, and saw her scorn. What kind of life, what kind of men had she known, when she sold herself... and came back and danced for her idol — for _him_?

"No — Miss Giry, no! Do you think I— She was distraught, that's all. She'd been weeping..."

"What a sheltered life you lead." It was a flat statement of fact. "I went on again for two shows in the evening, after Senator Jackson; I took one of Mother's pills. The Senator had friends, you see. They liked to party... hard."

And then she'd gone out to swim, Raoul thought. Alone in the cold grey dawn, with no-one to watch and no-one to care — and yet she'd come back, and pulled on her hard professional smile, and taken up the threads of her life again after doing what needed to be done. While he... he had fled again and again from facing reality, and squandered more happiness along the way than she'd ever dreamed of. His mouth tightened, and the split lip hurt in reminder.

"Listen to me..." He caught his breath, trying to hold those shadowed eyes with his. "You don't need the gun. You're stronger than I ever was — I think we both know that. There's no place for pride between us: you've seen me in the hell of my own making. You're destroyed, you're haunted, you're full of anger and hate towards the world that made you what you are and towards yourself for being weak enough to fail in what you thought you could be — I _know_. Give me the gun, Miss Giry..."

The strain of it was already a visible burden on her slender wrist, and her aim was no longer more than a gesture in his direction. In a few minutes she would have to release her grip on Gustave's collar and use both hands on the weapon if she still meant to hold him off; and from where he knelt, isolated and exposed on the cold timbers of the decking, it was not as if he could rush her even if he had intended it.

"Give me the gun, and your trust, and a chance — give me my son, Miss Giry..." He could see her falter; for one dreadful moment, as her head came up sharply and she tensed, he thought she meant to turn the gun on herself or Gustave. But her hand shook, and she let the muzzle fall.

"You should leave this place." The thought escaped him on impulse and he came to his feet, stretching out one hand towards her. "It's as poisonous to you as it was to us... leave your mother and her ambitions and _go_. Take your talent and find some place that's new and clean and kind..."

"It's too late for that." Her laugh was a desolate little sound that the wind snatched away; but she had allowed Gustave to edge round her, her fingers still twisted tightly at his neck. It seemed to Raoul as if the boy was almost drawing her forward despite herself. "And I've sold too much of myself to get Phantasma built for me to walk out on it now."

To walk out on it... or walk out on _him_. The shadow of the unspoken words lay open and aching between them like a shared wound; and if it was one that could wake only loathing in Raoul, the taste of that pain was all too intimately familiar still.

"You can't — _buy_ love." The words were jerked from some deep place against his will. "No matter how much blame you pile on yourself, how much you risk or give up to earn it back, you can't buy the love you want. Not with all the heartbreak in the world. Miss Giry, please—"

She'd come a few paces further forward as if in a dream, with Gustave frozen under her grasp like a small wild creature too frightened to take flight. "I've known that all along — longer than you."

And it was another name now that hung unspoken in the air between them.

She yanked the boy round with a jerk that tore a stifled cry from him, and thrust him out in front of her until Raoul could almost brush the small fingers that clutched for his. "Take him, then... what difference does it make? Seems I can't even buy one moment of attention away from _her_..."

She would release Gustave. He could see it in her face. Then a few swift running steps to oblivion; the fall, half-stunned, and the final, feeble struggles of the body against the will that bore it down and the clutching merciless water. He'd lived it over and over again in his dreams. The Seine had not been gentle on Boncarré — betrayer, bankrupt, friend — when they found him.

"Don't." Memory brought it out more harshly than he'd intended. "You don't have to; he can't make you... Listen to me. You're bruised and overlooked, but even if he can't see it you've got talent of your own — bright, funny, engaging... you make the world a happier place for hundreds of people, and God knows that's more than most of us can say. We can't all be like—"

He'd thought he could say it. Thought he could lay the ghost that was haunting both of them. But his voice broke on the name, and he heard quite distinctly Meg Giry's tiny gasp.

Raoul closed his eyes against the memory. "—like Christine..."

"Christine? Christine — always Christine!" She caught in a great shuddering breath that echoed his.

"Papa!"

Raoul had moved without thinking the moment he heard the boy's cry. But Gustave was clinging hard against his leg, shivering, and it was a woman's cold hands that found his grasp and her weight that collapsed into his arms in a torrent of sobs; the muffled words were blurred beyond recognition, and all he could do was hold onto her in the shared agony of that dark with the child's small body pressed close against his own. He freed one hand; gripped Gustave's shoulder tightly.

"Miss Giry..." She was too slender, her arms fragile around his neck where Christine's were firm and strong. And her body fitted against his in different places; he had not thought another woman's hold could feel so... wrong.

One clutching hand still held the gun. He drew it loose, gently — skin crawling cold now at the realisation of what might have happened — and broke it open to shake out the load: one, two, three four... and the empty chamber it had been stored on.

Gustave had raised his head at the movement, eyes wide. Raoul managed a smile for his son, with a sudden ache of pride that took him by surprise. The boy had been brave — brave beyond belief. If there were to be nightmares from this, better they should be Raoul's alone...

"Here." He reversed the empty weapon in his hand and held it out, offering it to the child. "Your turn to keep guard. Miss Giry won't mind playing the game a little longer — will you?"

Her face came up to meet his, tear-drenched and wild, and their eyes met almost fiercely.

"He's seen enough," Raoul said under his breath. "For the boy's sake—"

An almost imperceptible nod. He watched her regain control: felt her grip on him slacken, and loosed his own hold with a brief, inadequate pat on the back. She, too, had courage... but then she would scarcely have lasted this long without it.

"Why don't we walk back, then? I'm sure Gustave can make sure I don't run away..." Even to Raoul's ears the playful tone almost rang true, and she held out her crossed wrists as if they were to be bound together, offering them to Gustave's wary gaze. "What will you do with me, Vicomte?"

But there was a very real question in that beneath the pretence, and she was trembling. Raoul took both her hands in his under the guise of urging her back along the pier, the boy trailing them with fierce concentration.

"I—" Half his attention was spared for the light sound of his son's footsteps behind, and the answer came out hopelessly disjointed. "I suppose— Nothing... I— I don't know."

What on earth was he to do? She'd threatened Gustave — she'd meant, he thought, to go through with it, at least where her own life was concerned. He could have her committed to a cell or under a doctor's care for what she'd done. But he'd brought her back from the edge almost without meaning it, and instead of one rescue on his hands, in a sense he now had two.

"I want my mother." It was less an outcry than a statement of implacable intent; Gustave caught up with them at a run, circling wide, and marched backwards, covering Meg Giry with his weapon in a manner that made Raoul profoundly thankful it was empty. "_She_"—an accusatory glare—"said Mother was looking for me..."

"She is, I promise you — she is." Raoul caught his breath even as the woman beside him clutched at his arm: was that a shape — two shapes — detaching themselves from under the shadows at the end of the pier... beginning now to run? "And the moment she has you safely back with her, she'll be free to decide—"

He broke off.

"Decide what?" Gustave demanded, stopping dead in his tracks.

"Decide... about going home," Raoul said slowly, the words wrenched out of him. He watched the lantern-light fall across Christine's face, the hair half-tumbling loose from its pins, and the glory of relief and love that shone out for Gustave, all for Gustave, as the child turned at last towards the sound of her hurrying footsteps and she swooped down upon him.

Fresh tears gleamed unheeded on her cheeks. "_Gustave_—"

"Mother!"

Raoul waited, as if at a great distance. Why did that other hang back? Was he so confident then in his power to call her whenever he wanted — to claim the family of his desire?

Meg Giry's weight was heavy on his arm, and Raoul caught hold of her as she swayed.

"Here — take her. Help her." He looked up into the face of the masked shadow that paced towards them. "You owe her that much, for ten years' service."

But the jibe was little more than a ghost of defiance; it seemed to Raoul that he no longer felt anything much any more.

"Meg. Little Meg." It was barely more than a breath, murmured with more gentleness and regret than he would have credited. "Madame told me—"

"I don't think Madame Giry told you the half of it," Raoul said quietly. "I don't think she knew. I hope to heaven she didn't... if she is any kind of natural mother at all."

He had an impulse to tell the man — to fling in his face what had been done for his sake. But the knowledge was not his to give: and for a creature like that, he told himself, doubtless it would be no shame... Meg's body against his own was slack and unresponsive, as if the taut strings that kept her upright had yielded in a final merciful collapse, and he thrust her into the Phantom's grasp.

"Take her. Ask her the truth — if you can spare a moment from your happiness. It's you she wants... God knows why."

The half-face twisted beneath the mask in something that Raoul, unbelieving, could only read as pain. "It seems then, Vicomte, that we bear the same message for one another..."

Left at a loss, Raoul stared at him in dull incomprehension. Beyond them, the woman and child were oblivious beneath the lantern, lost in one another's arms.

The other man's gaze had followed his. His voice, haunting still in its power, held a last trace of contempt at Raoul's expense; but the bitterness was turned inwards in a painful echo.

"It's you she wants — God knows why."

A moment later, and he was lost in the shadows. Meg Giry was gone. The cold wind stole around Raoul and left him uncertain and alone.


	5. The Seagull

**Chapter 5: The Seagull**

Christine buried her face in Gustave's hair again, nuzzling the warm small-boy scent of him and enveloping him in a tight embrace until he began at last to wriggle and pull away. She was still shaking with reaction.

She'd believed the Phantom fully capable of taking her son from her and keeping them apart to hold her to his will; but he would never have harmed him. Not the child he had so ardently believed to be his own — the boy in whose quick mind and talent he had seen an unmarred reflection of what he might have been. If she'd had any doubt of that, the man's horror and distress when the boy was found missing from backstage had made it clear: Mr Y would never hurt Gustave, she was certain of it, even in heartbreak or despair.

Harm to Raoul... was a very different matter.

And so in those first few bewildered moments it had been Raoul's life she feared for, cut short at the hands of some trap or over-zealous lackey when he'd plunged out after their son in the grip of blind misery and the desperate need to act. She'd been afraid for Gustave at the first when the boy had failed to return, and again when she understood that he was truly missing. But he'd wandered off before, caught up in the flush of some unforeseen interest or following a trail that no adult could make out: as a mother her worry was acute enough but tempered by the pangs of experience.

She had not truly panicked to begin with. Not until frenzied inquisition had brought to light Meg Giry's hand in the whole affair, and a tumult of insecurity and rage at which Christine, horrified, had never guessed. Not until Meg's mother, herself on the point of breakdown, had flung accusations that betrayed all too clearly the direction of poor Meg's heart, as Christine's presence stole everything from her that she had wanted or might have had. Not until the loaded gun that had been called for, against Christine's protests, had turned up missing, with Meg Giry as the last to have entered the high Aerie without its Master's knowledge...

She had been afraid then, most terribly afraid. Concerned for Meg, yes, who had been so dear a friend in their years on the stage, but more so for Raoul, who was unarmed and unprepared — and above all and most desperately for Gustave, a little boy who knew nothing of madness or death, and had neither a man's strength or resource to resist.

She'd brought him here. She'd introduced him to Mr Y, she'd led Madame Giry unknowingly into that disastrous belief, and she'd encouraged him to explore in Phantasma. If harm had come to Gustave in America it would have shattered her world beyond mending... but she knew it would have been herself she held to blame.

Her life of barely an hour ago seemed a tiny, coloured, tranquil thing, a distant scene from a magic-lantern show. The Vicomtesse de Chagny had thought herself buffeted by tides of emotion too strong for any woman to endure twice in a lifetime; but she'd been certain of her past and held on stubbornly towards a known future, however bleak or grey. Gustave had sung in her dressing-room and they'd laughed together and made plans — oh, she'd thought herself beleaguered and unhappy, but, looking back, that bright certainty stood out as the last foothold on the edge of a toppling gulf.

One song. The last hurdle. The last taste of joy and applause — she'd longed for it; how could she not? — and then release back into familiar, well-worn life, where the struggles were mundane and dangerous secrets could be buried along with the memory of shame-filled desires.

Only... it had all been false, all of it, the song that was no song but a wager on her soul and the secret she had feared and hidden so long. Everything had come tumbling down, and left her tossed as wildly on the seas of fear and rage as that innocent under the Opera so many years ago. They had veered from one crisis to another with no time to choose a course, until growing frantic worry for Gustave had driven everything else out of her mind, and now all she could do was cling to her son and convince herself again and again that he was safe and this was real.

But Gustave, impatient with being babied, was eager to retell the whole encounter in the most hair-raising terms. Christine held him close and expressed gratifying excitement in all the appropriate places, giving silent thanks for the blessed resilience of childhood.

"—And then she held me over the edge and I couldn't _breathe_—"

"Darling, are you sure you're not—"

Gustave, busy re-imagining himself as the hero of a glorious adventure, bestowed a look of pity upon his mother of the variety appropriate to apprehensive females. "You can kiss me again if you really need to," he offered generously, turning up his face for the embrace in question, and Christine pressed her warm cheek against his and felt the small arms come round her neck.

"I won't cry any more, I promise, darling. I want to hear your story, and how you got back safe and sound..."

And if the smile she gave him was a little watery for all that, it was more than enough encouragement for Gustave to launch back into a highly-coloured account in which his own bravery was equalled only by the breathtaking heroics of the rescue party. If Raoul had longed to be a knight in shining armour, he'd found a fitting location on the fertile plains of the boy's imagination. Years rolled away, and she glanced up to share a moment's laughter at Gustave's more improbable flights of fancy, remembering the joint stories of their childhood.

"Raoul—" Laughter died as she saw him, hesitant at the entrance to the pier; they knew each other far too well for him ever to be a fairytale prince in her eyes, but the handsome young man in the opera box was a dear illusion returned now to memory. Battered, bruised and dishevelled, unsure of his welcome or if he should approach, for an aching moment he seemed the echo of an older Gustave. Her son would look just so after some schoolboy scuffle — coat ripped, honour defended, and consequences belatedly to be faced — and the elusive ghost of that likeness between them caught her unawares.

She held out her hands, remembering too late all that lay unspoken between them. "Raoul, please..."

He came; slowly, but he came, and she wrapped her hands in his, conscious of broad knuckles and the square male strength of them. Men were so helpless to face the real problems of their lives... She stooped to drop a rueful kiss across their joined fingers on impulse, and felt him flinch.

Her grip tightened, and she looked up into her husband's averted face. "To hear Gustave talk, anyone would think you'd been fighting off half the hosts of hell single-handed."

She'd hoped for a smile. But Raoul's gaze, when he turned to her at last, showed only a bone-deep weariness as irresolute as her own.

"I talked to her, that was all." For a moment he seemed on the verge of adding more; but the words ebbed away into a little distant shrug, and he retrieved his hands gently from her clasp.

Christine's throat constricted. "You saved his life — and Meg's too. You're not going to deny that, I hope: and at any rate you might let me thank you for it!"

She had at least startled him. A flush darkened across his cheeks, and he felt with a quick nervous movement for his watch, glancing down.

"I brought him back so that you could choose... Miss Daaé." He shut the watch-case, slipping it back into his pocket with a painful finality. "If I travel light and make haste, I could still be aboard the 'Atlantic Queen' as she passes the pier-head tonight... Christine, if that's what you want, I can set you free — free from my moods, my ruinous dealings, my neglect; you know better than I how often I've failed you these last few years and how little we have left of the happiness I promised. If after all that you know, all you've seen, it's _him_ you want"—one hand strayed upwards, she thought unconsciously, to cradle his own throat—"then soar free... But don't let anything force you, not ever again. Not Gustave's fate, or mine, or his: choose for yourself, Christine, just once, and I'll go. Whatever you ask. It's all I have left to give."

A small, shocked silence was Gustave, pressed close against her side: she could have shaken her husband, or wept, or both.

"Raoul, _no_—" Of all the moments on all the days to choose to be stupidly honourable, when they were all tired and off-balance, and words had been spoken already that should never have been said or heard... "Listen. No-one is going on a boat alone. Gustave is exhausted: so are you. So am I. We're going to find a hotel room— a lodging-house— anywhere decent that will take us in for the night—"

"Our luggage..." Raoul, strung up to breaking point, was utterly confused, and she laid a hand in appeal on the breast of his coat.

"We'll send for it, dear. In the morning — sooner, if we can. Please... there are things I should have told you, too many, but— I can't go back to Phantasma. Not those rooms. Not tonight."

Not to those rooms with the shadow of ten years' passion murmuring in the dark, bereaved and empty, where every mirror held unseen ghosts and music whispered in from the balcony and above her bed. Not with that heartbreak still haunting her heels like an echo of the long, swift steps that had led her here tonight in a renunciation of their own.

She looked round; but _he_ had gone, as he had said he would. She did not know if she would ever see him again — if he would ever find peace from the fires that consumed him in the guise of her face and her voice. She had done such harm, to him and through him to the others he touched; even to Raoul, her poor angry Raoul who measured himself against a taunting shade and fell short of his own imaginings. And yet she had meant none of it, and she did not know what else she could have done.

If only — if only she had never gone back to the Opera that night... And yet, remembering that broken shape in the dark and the disbelieving joy that had woken between them at his clutch, she could not wish even those forbidden moments unmade.

Not even after all the rage and pain of these last few days. She looked back at Raoul, and saw him get a grip on himself, shaking his head as if to clear the cobwebs, and return her a hesitant smile that slid a little lopsided. "A hotel. In New York. Well, that should be possible."

Gustave, beside her, tugged at the sleeve of Raoul's coat for reassurance. His father reached down almost without looking, and the boy tucked a confiding hand into his. Watching that mutual enveloping grasp, Christine felt something unacknowledged ease within her. Perhaps — the thought stole in quietly — perhaps America had saved them after all.

* * *

><p>It had taken all Raoul's English and most of the contents of his note-case to get them a room in a decent quarter after dark and without luggage, even after she'd done her best to brush down his coat and clean him up. Between her gaudy stage costume and his stained and battered appearance, Christine thought ruefully, they must have looked like refugees from some saloon brawl, with Gustave a child snatched from the bosom of his family to be trailed through the streets by such a thoroughly disreputable pair of foreigners... But it was Gustave's respectable clothing and polite little bow that had softened the heart of Lila Morrison on that final doorstep, and secured them this refuge in a room threadbare with fierce cleanliness above the passing rumble of the street.<p>

Kneeling by the little truckle-bed — Mrs Morrison had unbent enough to offer them a second room, but at Gustave's look of panic-stricken appeal even Raoul had not demurred at keeping him with them — Christine tucked the sheets more firmly round the child and kissed him again gently. The long lashes did not stir.

"He's asleep." She got up with a sigh and began to straighten the covers on the bed where the trundle had been pulled out from under it. Raoul had made no move to do so. He still sat on the side of the bed in his shirt-sleeves, staring unseeing at a print of Cape Cod on the wall where a single seagull soared in eternal frozen motion. He looked broken-down and lost and alone.

Christine turned up the gas-jet a little — it had been hard enough to get Gustave to sleep with the novelty of being put to bed in his undershirt, but they really could not continue to sit in the dark — and crossed the room to sink down beside him on the edge of the mattress, setting both arms about his waist and leaning into him for comfort. After a moment his arm came hesitantly round her.

She buried her face in his waistcoat, conscious of a button pressing beneath her cheek. His heart beat steadily against her, and she could feel the soft rise of his breathing; the whole rushing miracle of blood and muscle and human life that every day was taken so much for granted. He could have been lying cold at this moment — Gustave could have been drifting face-down beneath the pier, with the tide plucking at him like seaweed...

A shiver ran through her, and Raoul's hold tightened. "You should get under the covers. That gown isn't fit to sit around in—"

Christine shook her head mutely without looking up, conscious of his voice as a set of warm vibrations. He carried the faint scent of lavender on his linen, and a familiar trace of cedar from the wardrobe, and of bran where his dress-clothes had been brushed out; beneath that was the reality of stale fear and haste, and beneath that again the reassurance that was Raoul, just Raoul, and all the depths of home.

She wrapped her arms around him more closely until all she could see of the room was the blur of his shirtfront. It was easier this way — when she couldn't see his face.

"There are things I need to tell you, Raoul. And I need to do it now, before it gets any harder, and while I still have the courage..."

A long silence. She was not sure if it was the sound of his heart that had grown louder, or her own pulse.

"I don't think... either of us knows the other any more." It was barely a breath, but he had grown very still. "Go... on."

She swallowed a ridiculous urge to lie; to spare him and to shield the pain of that other. But if there was ever to be trust between them again it would have to be her doing as much as his.

"Do you remember that musical box they gave Gustave — that tinny novelty thing? Well, it played another tune..."

Once started, the words spilled out in a tumbling stream. She told him the whole without comment or excuse and almost without hesitation, even as he had told her of his own dealings that last night with the Phantom, and shadows gathered in the corners of the room and whispered beneath the hissing dance of the gas-jet on the wall.

Raoul drew another long breath when it was over. "And... that was all?"

It was the question any husband had the right to ask — the question no wife could ask, though it had been so long now, between them, that she had wondered — but the implication still drove a flush into her cheeks. "Tears... passion... promises... but yes, that was all."

It seemed so little now, set out in the open. So shockingly, tragically little for a storm that had swept over her life and sent others to wreck all around.

She pulled free and sat up at last, searching for answers in his face. "I don't know why I didn't tell you — it seems so foolish — but I... I couldn't. He'd trusted me, and you would have..." She faltered. "You were—"

"I was drunk out of my— out of what little sense I had left." Raoul's voice was thick with bitterness. "Why not say it? I spent last night drunk, and the night before, and if I weren't here with you tonight—"

But the hard, pinched look eased a little before her stricken face. "No. No, I wouldn't... I'm sorry, Christine, I— I just—"

He broke off, the hand that had been around her shoulder clenched tight on his knee. "He tried to hand you over to me — did you know that? — arrogant to the last... It was when I gave Meg Giry into his keeping. He threw some sneer or other in my face and as good as told me to take you — as if it were that night all over again, and _his_ mercy thrust down my throat—"

"It wasn't meant like that." Too much bitterness in that yielding; too much bitter pain in the hearing of it, Christine thought, reaching out to him almost helplessly. "Please don't— don't hate him so..."

"As if there were no other choice for you but to be handed off between us. You deserved — deserve — the chance for something better—" And there was all the old anguish in that.

"Don't hate yourself so," she whispered again, setting a hand on his arm. But she did not think he heard her.

"Why would you want me back? I can't woo you with music; my trust, my folly, brought us close to ruin, and I let it destroy our lives... while you nursed a dream that disowned my son!" He cut himself off abruptly with a glance for Gustave, who had stirred at the raised voice, flinching.

Her husband's eyes met hers again, and fell. Her hand still rested on his sleeve; but it might as well have been a block of wood beneath her touch. "When I saw you stand at _his_ side in silence as he claimed Gustave... what was I to think, Christine? You trusted and shielded him. You defend him to me still. How was I— am I to believe it was me you wanted?"

_Do you think him worthy of you, Christine? Do you think even he believes that?_ But that was never and had never been the question...

"When I thought you'd gone—" She caught her breath, remembering. "Raoul, you saved Gustave tonight. You found the warmth and the words to reach down to Meg's despair and bring her to reason—"

"I didn't have to reach down to anywhere," Raoul said quietly, and she could hear nothing but exhaustion in his tone. "We were both there already, that was all. And it's hard... to come back."


	6. War and Peace

**Chapter 6: War and Peace**

The gas hissed softly behind them and Gustave murmured something in his sleep; the window-frame rattled a little as a heavy wagon passed outside, and somewhere nearby a baby wailed and was hushed back to silence. Raoul looked back at her steadily, his shoulders set in defeat, and the span of their lives together lay trapped between the four walls of this little room, ebbing and ebbing away... Christine bit her lip, eyes filling unaccountably.

"Don't you understand?" Her grip moved convulsively on his arm. "You don't have to _win_ to be with me. You never did."

It wasn't strength or protection that had mattered up on the Opera House roof. It was the answering joy of that promise given and returned; of his impulsive need to shield her, and not his success.

"Just... stay yourself. That's all I ever wanted. All I was afraid of losing — all that matters to Gustave, or to me. Fail or succeed or lose your temper, forgive me and let me forgive you, but _be Raoul_. Be real and flawed and human: you don't have to be strong all the time, you don't even have to be right. We're not those young dreamers on the Opera stage any more, and I'm not made of porcelain; I won't break. Let me fight for you too. Let me _in_—"

_That's all I ask of you_. She didn't say it; didn't think, at that moment, that she could say anything else at all past the ache in her throat that threatened to silence her altogether.

Her fingers were pleating creases in his sleeve. She looked away. Felt Raoul's hand close over hers and hold it tightly, and clung to his grasp in return with a spasmodic clutching strength that was answered in kind, like two frightened children in the dark.

"I— love you."

It was jerked out of him bald and unadorned, as if he had not meant to say it; but his grip had tightened until it hurt, and all she could manage was a helpless "I know". They'd been stripped down together to this halting naked pain, and she did not know how to make things right any more.

An unsteady breath from him that was almost a laugh. "It would be easier to believe, wouldn't it, if you hadn't heard it before — if I hadn't used that plea on you already tonight with a lie riding on its tail and a fortune at stake."

"I didn't mean—" She caught in a breath of her own, looking up into his face. "Raoul, I _do_ know. I've always known, since you were fourteen — don't you remember? — and soaked to the skin."

"Fourteen, yes." She'd surprised the ghost of a smile into his eyes. "Sticky and salty... and entirely unprepared to be kissed."

"It was an perfectly harmless kiss." She could feel the echo of that sudden boyish flush from so long ago creeping into her own cheeks; surely — surely? — she had not imagined the blessed note of teasing in his voice. It had been so long... "It was the same kiss I'd have given your aunt, you know it was. Grateful and proper and absolutely nothing more."

"Not at fourteen it wasn't," Raoul said ruefully. "And if you'd ever been a fourteen-year-old boy, Miss Christine—"

And this time there was no question for either of them about the smile.

He released her hand and drew her nearer, and she nestled into his shoulder with a sigh, afraid to say anything that might break this tentative moment they'd found. As his arms closed round her she thought that he was trembling; but the tremor where she was pressed against him could just as well have been her own.

"And on the roof?" His fingers brushed the curve of her jaw, turning her face up to his and lingering for a second. "I suppose that was innocuous too? Or perhaps in such a proper young lady it was only a momentary lapse?"

But the answer was hovering there on his mouth... if she wanted to take it. The query in his eyes behind the laughter was desperately uncertain.

"You know very well it was nothing of the kind." The words came out a little breathless where she had meant to speak lightly, and she had to swallow before she could go on. "It was a promise— for both of us—"

She closed her eyes, reaching up for the kiss that was waiting, and felt her husband's mouth yield against hers. Lips parted and clung between shaky breaths; she broke away briefly to settle more closely against him, and fleeting caresses of mouth on mouth slipped into exploration as her response grew eager under his.

It was not the dream-like rediscovery they'd shared in her dressing-room, with all the hope and tenderness of that false dawn. But rocked in Raoul's arms, answering his halting, awkward embraces in quest of the reassurance they both sought, Christine felt the hard knot within her heart ease a little further.

She began to kiss him more hungrily; felt him flinch and pull free on an indrawn breath. Left undignified and somewhat bereft, Christine was betrayed into a small sound of protest. Her eyes flew wide, and she found Raoul exploring his split upper lip rather ruefully with the tip of a cautious tongue. The smile of apology he offered her was even more lopsided than before.

"I think we might have to wait a while for this — a few days, anyhow. I'm sorry, Christine." He caught her sudden stricken gaze, voice roughening into warmth. "Oh darling— darling, don't look like that..."

But memory showed her again and again, with relentless clarity, the look on her husband's face when she had hit him. _She_ had done that — and now he was apologising to her for his own pain...

"Forgive me," she managed, very low, as her cheeks flushed with the inadequacy of it, and saw him shake his head firmly.

"Not for one minute. That's one scar I'm not ashamed of; it was more than earned, dear heart, and if anyone had the right to it, you did, with that abominable bet... I only wish I could repay the rest of it somehow, with less cost to you." He felt at his mouth again, dabbing with a pocket-handkerchief, and held out the result on the breath of a grin. "There — blood washes away sin, you see—"

Shocked between tears and laughter at the little blasphemy, as he'd intended, Christine found herself choking back sudden hysterical giggles. The tears slipped free, and Raoul held her close, murmuring against her hair.

"That wasn't funny — forgive me — not funny at all, no, of course not. Don't cry, now, don't cry..." Words and soothing touch lapped her round like the white fur he'd tucked around her in their carriage, that first winter; it had been the softest thing she'd ever felt, and she had scarcely been able to believe it was hers.

Christine wrapped herself in his presence for a long moment. Then she raised her head and took his face between her two hands, enclosing the wounded place with the comfort of her own gentle mouth and exploring each sensation: the first dry prickle of shaven skin, the warm moisture within, the swelling where she had hurt him and the stiffened wound itself, traced lightly — oh, so lightly — with the healing touch of a small, repentant tongue.

It was neither a kiss nor a caress between them, but something both detached and more intimate. Raoul's hands slid forward across her shoulders, but he made no sound. For a moment they were quiet and still, poised together by the tiny tender movements of her mouth around his.

Then Raoul sighed and ran a light touch down her arms, easing free. He leaned forward to set his cheek against hers briefly.

"We should get your coat, Madame de Chagny — or get you tucked up in bed. It's getting chilly in here, and you'll need something round your shoulders if we're going to sit up much later tonight."

He stood up, stretching widely with an inadvertent yawn, and reached for the coat that she had laid as an extra layer over Gustave. The movement left her aware for the first time of the creeping chill of the night air without him close by, and she hugged exposed arms tightly. "Leave Gustave the coat, dear. He'll need it... I'm worn out anyway; I'm going to bed."

She hesitated. "Could you unlace me?"

It felt an oddly personal request; but her husband's hands were as quick and steady down her back as those of the dresser who'd helped her in the theatre that afternoon, and she slid between the sheets in her chemise, tugging the covers up over herself with a shiver. Mrs Morrison's services to her guests clearly did not encompass airing the beds, and the bed-linen at Phantasma had undoubtedly been of a finer quality.

She curled up into a ball, feeling the springs creak as Raoul sat down again, and the small movements of undressing that meant he had decided to turn in for the night himself. Another rising lurch meant piles of neat clothing set down across the room — even drunkenness only led to staggering heaps: the habit had been too well beaten-in during his youth as a cadet — and the light dimmed and went out. Breath hissing with the cold despite long-sleeved underwear, he dived beneath the blankets in some haste and without ceremony, and she felt his weight settle beside her.

It had been a long time since she had shared a room, let alone a bed... But if he felt the same constraint, he said nothing.

Christine lay for what seemed like long minutes watching chinks of streetlight chase across the walls as the shades on the window swayed, and hearing her husband's breathing gradually grow deeper and more regular. The clammy sheets warmed around her slowly. Small sounds from beyond the foot of the bed were Gustave moving in his sleep; once he cried out and she was on the verge of springing up to him. But the words died away into a long sleepy mumble, and she lay tense, listening for more. So far as she could tell he seemed to be fast asleep again.

She put out a hand in the dark, a little awkwardly; found Raoul's shoulder.

"I heard." Raoul rolled over, muffled with sleep. "'Papa, I want to go home' — and do you suppose he'll be the only one tonight to see that pier in his dreams?"

Christine shivered, picturing her own faceless fears, all the worse because she had seen nothing of it, and Raoul sighed and reached out towards her. "Christine, come here."

She stiffened, abruptly self-conscious as to his intentions. "Gustave..."

"I'm not going to wake Gustave. I'm not even going to keep you awake." Raoul's patient voice was cut off by a yawn, and he wrapped an arm round her and drew her closer. "You're freezing... come over this side, there, where we were sitting. Like this..."

Caught up and tumbled across in the warm depths of his body, Christine managed no more than a brief protesting squeak. The hollow where he had lain was blissfully welcoming... She stretched out cautiously against him; let him drape obliging limbs across her cold toes.

"Better?" It was a murmur in her ear. "Good. Go to sleep. Try not to dream."

"You too," Christine whispered softly, settling back into the comfort he offered. But at least tonight if he woke she would be there with reassurance of her own; the nightmares had come back, these last few years, and she knew they had been getting worse. She'd tossed in her room down the hall, listening.

Well, there would be no separate suites for them this night; and not so much as a hot brick to air the bed, either. A tiny chuckle escaped her. "Shared rooms — damp sheets — coats on beds: who'd have thought we'd sink this low?"

"The Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Chagny are above such things... Do you suppose old Ma Morrison would give us breakfast if I used my title on her?"

His breath brushed the back of her neck, and Christine choked back laughter. "Go to _sleep_, Raoul."

"I don't mind this sort of 'low' — not like that farce on the docks." Bitterness stole in. "Not so long as we can call our souls our own..."

But the echoes of those last words trailed off into the silence between them with a meaning he had never intended; and that was the question, Christine thought helplessly, that would always be the question now until they could learn somehow to live with it or to trust...

"Christine." It was almost a plea. "Christine — it's over now, isn't it? You're free... of _him_?"

But she couldn't give him the answer he needed so much to hear. Not when a part of her soul, that part she shared with Gustave, would always belong to the man whose unearthly music had given it form; the Phantom who — whatever else he was to her, whatever else he had done — had shaped its gift and taught it to take flight. Her soul would never be entirely her own while she still lived, and even for Raoul who loved her she could not make it so.

"Raoul..."

"Yes?"

"Nothing. I—" She let out a long breath and turned to lie against him, burrowing close. "Just... Raoul." The name lay cradled, high in the arch of her mouth; liquid consonants and a sigh.

"I'm here." Quiet words in the dark. "I'll be here."

It was the promise he'd made to her so long ago; the promise she'd begged of him, and returned. _Wherever you go, let me go too..._

"I'm here," Raoul said again softly, questioning nothing, demanding nothing, and she put her arms around him.

"So am I." The choice that mattered; the answering joy. "Oh, don't you see?— so am I."


	7. Notes from Underground

**Chapter 7: Notes from Underground**

Meg Giry had been the one on her way up out of the chorus, before any of this had ever started. She had been the one people noticed: the bright one, the quick one, the girl with the spark that said _Look at me_. She'd been the one who'd been featured in the minor rôles — serving-maids and confidantes, pageboys and peasant dancers, tiny parts all of them, but she'd been there on the programme with her name in print, she'd been there on the stage with her clear voice and her vivid grace and she'd made an impression.

She'd been the one with initiative and ambition, the one who was going places: her mother's daughter. And it hadn't been fair, because dreamy, quiet Christine Daaé had talent of her own that no-one ever saw. Christine could have done just as well as Meg if anyone had given her the chance. But if it had been left up to Christine, no-one would ever have looked twice.

So when Carlotta, the diva of those days, had let loose her temperament one time too many and stormed off the stage before the start of the production, Meg had followed the impulse of a moment — as so often in her life — and spoken up on her friend's behalf: "Christine Daaé could do it, sir." She'd known Christine was good; she'd heard her practising for her new teacher. She hadn't had the faintest idea Christine was _that_ good...

Oh, Meg could have sung that aria, but she would have sounded like any of the other chorus girls: underdeveloped, inadequate beside the power and technique that poured from the throat of a _prima donna_ like Carlotta. She'd wanted the managers to hear Christine's potential, how much she'd learnt and how much she'd improved. She hadn't expected her mother's endorsement. And she certainly hadn't expected her friend, her fellow-dancer, to open her mouth, draw a deep breath, and sound... glorious.

People had looked twice at Christine Daaé after that, all right. The Vicomte de Chagny had come bursting into her life with all the subtlety and enthusiasm of a wolfhound puppy, the management had catapulted her into leading rôles — Meg had tried hard, very hard and mostly successfully, not to hear the backstage gossip that connected those two events — and the Phantom of the Opera had slipped out from behind Mother's secretive hints into terrifying and ultimately all too vulnerable flesh-and-blood existence.

People had loved, married, _died_. Fortunes and lives had been ruined. Her own world had been devastated and utterly changed... all because of one generous, impulsive, unthinking act so very long ago.

It was stupid to think like that, Meg knew. Worse, it was foolish — and if there was one thing the Ooh-la-la Girl could not afford, no matter what the punters thought, it was to be foolish. Her friend and the young de Chagny had been little Raoul and Christine together long before he'd heard her again on the opera stage, and it was the unseen Opera Ghost, of course, who'd been that new tutor from the first... and it would all have happened anyway sooner or later, whatever Meg Giry had done.

But she'd been jealous; she could admit that now. How could she help but be jealous, just a little, when her orphaned almost-sister was blossoming out from a shy mouse to a star almost overnight, with all the attention and the rôles that Meg had planned for herself some day?

Not yet, though. She hadn't been ready yet, she couldn't have done what Christine had done, and she'd been honest enough with herself to admit it. And by the end, as she came to understand day by day the fatal web in which Christine was trapped, she had long since ceased to envy her friend at all.

She'd wondered, though — of course she'd wondered, at first with a shiver of fascinated terror, and in after years with a confused longing that she had never dared examine — about her own solo in _Don Juan Triumphant_. How would it have been to have come on stage a matter of minutes later? To have danced and spun and sparkled in allure not before poor plump good-natured Ubaldo Piangi as the Don, but all unknowing in the presence of the Phantom himself?

She'd liked Piangi. So had Christine, she knew; so had everyone else in the company. He'd let Carlotta treat him like a lapdog, but there wasn't an ounce of harm in him, and he'd deserved better of her than hankerings after his murderer, a man who'd brushed him out of life like an old cloak dropped in the mud to bridge the way to the other side. But the guilty _frisson_ of possibility remained.

She'd done as Mother said. She'd stayed in the safety of the crowd and let the young Vicomte go down after her friend into danger alone. And when it was all over — when, bravery bolstered by safety in numbers, they'd burst into the rooms beyond the lake and found no trace of the Phantom save one betraying mask; when the wedding of Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, to Miss Christine Daaé of the Opera Populaire had been openly announced in the teeth of all scandal, with the young man flushed and glad and the girl shy and beautiful within the shelter of his arm — when it was all over she'd obeyed Mother once more, and left Christine with no more than a note of well-wishing to seek wedded bliss in circles within which little Meg Giry would never be able to move.

She'd packed up the few bags they possessed, paid off their lodgings, and left the portals of the Opera barred behind her to the bailiffs and the sensation-seekers, along with the future she'd once dreamed of. Following Mother's directions, she'd travelled to Calais with Madame Giry's latest charity case, a shivering, heavily-cloaked fugitive who'd shrunk beneath his mufflers from Meg's curiosity and the sympathy of their fellow-passengers alike. She'd suspected the shadow of the guillotine on his trail; but Mother knew best.

And it wasn't until she saw the shabby freighter in the docks, and Mother sent her on board openly while she smuggled that shrinking figure down below, that Meg understood they were leaving France for his sake — perhaps forever. She'd known then that it must be important. But they were two days out of port before she discovered just why.

She'd slipped down into the hold with a meagre plate of food saved out of her own portion for their unseen guest, and found him huddled in a nest of sacking and crying out in fever. She'd lifted the crude bandaging across his face to touch his forehead... and seen again the unveiled horror that had glared across the stage as Christine found that last mute gesture of defiance.

She'd dropped the plate and screamed — not at the sight but at the memory, at the knowledge she was trapped down below in that tiny space with the spectre whose insane laughter had echoed as the chandelier came hurtling down — and the hoarse wakening scream that had broken from the man's throat in answer had been the most terrible sound of betrayal she had ever heard. It had haunted her for hours afterwards as she sobbed in her cabin, refusing even her mother's help as she understood at last what had been risked in one final act of pity, and just what Mother had done.

_Fear can turn to love_... Meg had mocked at herself bitterly over the years since. Had she really been so horror-struck that night — she, the fearless, the impulsive, who had always leapt before she looked and seldom counted the cost? How long had it been before she realised that the reign of the Phantom of the Opera had been broken indeed, with all its power and its mocking cruelty, and left behind only the drained and listless shell of a man twisted beyond all hope of acceptance? How many weeks had it taken, after all, before she came to share her mother's fierce protective grasp over the genius that might have been, and to idolise the talent that still flickered unquenchable within that shattered mind?

Genius without English, in America, could not pay the bills. Father O'Meary at the nearest church had found them lodgings with an old woman from Quebec, whose thick Canadian accent was almost as incomprehensible as the sharp Yankee patois of the streets all around. Mother had scrubbed floors. Meg had washed crocks down in the basement of a fine hotel with an assortment of other immigrants until her feet ached and her fingers softened and split. And _he_ — he had roamed skeletal and aimless in the cold shadows like a lost soul until the hour that the lodging-house door opened and he could find refuge once more in the two narrow rooms that they all shared.

He said nothing, but he learned the language faster than any of them. One night he had come home, poured out dollars on the table, and announced harshly that he had found employment. 'Coney Island' had meant nothing to Meg, not then; and though she had woken to hear her mother weeping softly that night, she had not understood why.

It was money that they desperately needed — for warm clothes against the New York winter, for better food, for a little heat when coal was so dear — and Meg had accepted without question that he brought in more income than the two women could. But from that day onwards he had begun to shrink from them again behind a frozen white mask of withdrawal more impenetrable by far than the crude cloth vizor he wore out on the streets; and it was weeks before she glimpsed a poster, caricatured but unmistakable, and learned the truth.

He had sold himself to a sideshow among the freaks and the fakes. He, who had hidden all his life from the jeers of the crowd, bared his deformity for hours each day behind canvas alongside the mermaids and the midgets, the Bird-Woman and the Two-Headed Girl, for a trooping succession of sightseers to gawp and point at in delicious dread. "See Mister Y, the Living Corpse — Twenty Dollars Guaranteed if Not Absolutely Genuine!"

Meg had gone to see it once, appalled yet drawn to know. The mermaid had flashed a glimpse of bare breasts to distract from her tawdry fish-skin, and the bearded lady had combed out the soft growth that fringed her jaw and hidden a yawn behind a sip of porter; and then _he_ had seen her, all drenched in green light as he was to heighten his horror, and the shame and fury in that gaze of recognition had sent her stumbling through the canvas flaps out into the raucous midway to hide her face among the crowd.

She knew now why he came back at night and scrawled out long jagged howls of music, only to pitch them from the window. Why he tore across and across into ribbons any that Mother tried to hoard. And... knowing that he was selling his body each day for money made it easier to start selling hers for him.

They were quick transactions, after all. Only a few minutes of discomfort in the dark. She had her privacy when she sold herself as he could not have his; she was always very careful, kept herself clean. She hid her earnings from her mother, and when she judged she had enough, offered them to the owner of the sideshow with a sweetener in kind — she could offer that unflinching now — when her scullery-English failed her in the task of persuasion.

It was not money enough, of course, to release the prime exhibit from his contract. But from that day Mr Y was allowed to display his death's-head gape in a battered dress-suit rather than a few scraps of winding-cloth to preserve his dignity, and they were able to start saving in earnest towards the dreams that began at last to resurface.

Mother must have known, Meg thought now with unforgiving clarity. If not in that first year, then later, when she sent Meg and her 'sweet smile' off to see the politicians or grease a loan, and when she offered to introduce legislators and union bosses into her daughter's dressing-room once Meg started dancing again. Surely she hadn't thought a little "ooh-la-la" and a glimpse of Paris was all they were after, those greased-back men with their hard eyes and their grating jowls?

But if she had known, then she hadn't let herself see. Just as Meg herself had refused for years to see the truth — that no matter how hard she worked and how hard she tried, how essential she made herself and how much she needed his esteem, she would never be more to the man who had become her master than a vaudeville act taken for granted; a reminder perhaps of humiliations he would rather forget.

All the same, there were other humiliations it seemed he'd been only too eager to remember, and it had hurt... She'd loved Christine in their Paris days, truly she had, and it had been like a breath of air out of that unspoilt girlhood to see her so unexpectedly again; but the reality of it had lashed back on her all too painfully in return.

Christine had everything: fame, a title, a son. Christine had taken the career Meg might have had back then, and any chance of a future with the man she worked for now. Christine had his tears, his promises, his music — the opportunity her mother had so blindly promised her: 'The Master is writing again!' When he had brought Christine onto Coney Island to steal her from her marriage and claim back her voice and her son for himself, there had been no thought of Meg Giry in his mind, no more than there had been at the start of the season when Phantasma had rung to the sound of applause and all the world had roared Meg's name again and again... save for him.

He'd forgotten her, forgotten his own opening night, for dreams of a woman he'd driven away. But then when had it ever been different? Everything she'd wanted and what little she'd had in the last ten years had been the second-hand leavings of _Christine_.

Even the Vicomte's arms around her on the pier a few hours back, Meg thought now with bitter humour from out of the peace she'd found, stretching her toes closer to the fire and pulling the blanket that covered her up under her chin. Oh, she hadn't wanted his attentions, far from it — but she'd had more than enough experience over the years to tell the difference between a man who was being a perfect gentleman and one whose awareness was simply elsewhere. His wife's name had hung between them on that dark brink, as much in his mind as in hers; to hear it acknowledged had been the last straw that sent her forward into the warmth of his hold in place of the cold numbness the ocean promised. If the torment of Christine's love had sent him down into danger once, then it had sent him also out there tonight — and in that irony lay her salvation.

But it was not Raoul de Chagny who had carried her here. She had been too far gone to know anything much, but she had roused once to see the familiar sharp curve of a half-mask bent over her in concern, and sunk back into oblivion in those hard arms on a single disbelieving thought: _he noticed me_.

He had come, then. She had not dreamed it when she thought she saw him at the pier's entrance with _her_... but it was not Christine who had been borne back in his clasp, and it was not Christine who had woken again to find herself in unfamiliar rooms beside a roaring fire with him kneeling beside her.

"Meg. Little Meg." The words she had longed to hear, even if it was acknowledgement and not pity that ought to have lain behind them. But pity, from him, was rare and precious enough to break her heart. "Meg... tell me, if you can."

She would never have told him any of it, if she had been in her right mind. If she'd had any pride left where he was concerned. But his gentleness sent her over the brink, and she poured out all the shame and the longings and the despair as if it had been the story of someone else and not the two of them at all, as if the telling itself could somehow wash her clean and make her truly little Meg Giry again, and she'd seen him turn aside to grieve. For her.

She'd heard Mother's raised voice earlier outside the room and shrunk back beneath her blanket, conscious of her own actions and their consequences in a way that had never crossed her mind with him. He had done worse, after all, in his time; so much worse... But the Master had sent her mother away with all the cold arrogance at his command, and locked the door. Perhaps she should have been afraid — there had been fear as well as fury in Mother's demands — but she felt only a deep gratitude.

She didn't want to see her mother again, not now. Maybe not ever. She didn't know.

She'd done as Mother said. She'd played out the older woman's ambitions without question all her life; she'd followed where the Master led and done what she could, in hopes of the rewards that Mother always saw just around the corner.

She'd obeyed to the brink of disaster. And then Mother had told her — had as good as flung it in her face — that it had all been for nothing. She'd hated Christine then with all the unthinking passion that her mother had taught her to vent, and she'd taken Christine's child, the adulterous, sinful child that Christine, who had everything, had chosen to conceal, and gone to make an end.

His child; his gun; his pier. His Meg.

But her mother had been wrong. Christine had not sung. Gustave was not the child they'd thought him — broken words from the man in front of her had warned her of that. And _he_ had not been altogether blind... not after all.

She did not want to see her mother. She was not that Meg Giry any more.

He did not love her, of course. She was not foolish enough to expect that. But he had brought her here to a deep chair in this warm room — part of Phantasma still, she thought, by the pattern of the fire-irons and the weave of the rug, but it was not a part she recognised — and had tucked a blanket around her in front of the fire and poured hot sweet coffee down her throat with all the ruthless solicitude of a physician when she found that she was trembling and could not stop.

It had been what she needed. And when what she needed was to cry, he had not denied her that either, though he had been almost painfully at a loss. They must have been quite a sight, she thought now, glancing with affection at his bent head: the sobbing showgirl and her masked employer whose ruthless tongue was more apt to cause tears than to comfort them. But then comfort might have undone her altogether.

He had stayed by her side and taken her hand awkwardly as she wept. And when she was done he had made that one simple request, and she had told him. Told him everything.

It seemed little enough in return for her to sit here quietly late into the night and listen for his sake to the pain that poured out of him now, even if his words too often hurt her — even if she was not always sure he remembered as he spoke that it was she, Meg Giry, who was there. What mattered was that someone should know, she understood that now; that there should be someone in the world who cared enough to witness, and not to judge. If she could be of any service to him at all, it would be in this hour when he needed her.

So she pulled the blanket up close despite the heat and watched his face as he stared down into the fire, and tried to hug to herself the knowledge that he trusted her enough to speak as he did, and forget that it was of another woman that he spoke. For it was to Christine that his outpouring returned, again and again and again.


End file.
